–Today’s Evangelicalism looks more like a political movement than Jesus.
–Today’s Evangelicalism is obsessed with power.
–Today’s Evangelicalism seems generally unteachable and unwilling to wrestle with theology.
–Today’s Evangelicalism doesn’t seem to share Jesus’ heart for outsiders.
–Today’s Evangelicalism punishes people by withholding of relationships.

I am in a privileged position. I have written extensively in criticism of the standard evangelical way of looking at things–it’s all there in the archives of this blog, for anyone who cares to look, and it has been for years. If anyone in my world wished to punish me with the loss of relationship because of the things I have said in this space, it would probably have happened by now. But it hasn’t.

Which is to say: I have awesome friends. And an awesome church community which allows me the space to think and to wrestle with things.

But not everyone is as fortunate as I am. In many parts of evangelicalism, there’s a price to be paid for wrestling with theology. There’s a price to be paid for questioning the prevailing evangelical wisdom on issues like: Is it sinful to be LGBT? Is there really a hell where people are consciously tormented for all of eternity? Is there really such a thing as the Rapture? Go against the prevailing evangelical wisdom on these and many other issues, and it is as if you are Satan the serpent saying “Hath God really said?”